Culpeper's complete herbal ... To which are ... annexed his English physician enlarged, and Key to [Galen's Method of] physic ... to which is also added ... receipts selected from the author's Last legacy / Nicholas Culpeper.

  • Nicholas Culpeper
Date:
1814
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Culpeper's complete herbal ... To which are ... annexed his English physician enlarged, and Key to [Galen's Method of] physic ... to which is also added ... receipts selected from the author's Last legacy / Nicholas Culpeper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    60/500 (page 40)
    inches long, and half an inch broad, thin and almost transparent, they look as tho they were torn ; the flowers are long, thick and whitish, set together almost like a bunch of grapes, which being gone, there succeeds for the most part sharp pointed grains altogether, containing a small white kernel in them. The second differs not much from this, save that it delights in more clear water; its stalks are not flat, but round ; its leaves are not so long, but more pointed ; As for the place we need not determine, for their name shews they grow in water. Government and virtues^ They are under the dominion of the Moon, and being made into a poultice, are excellent good for hot inflammations, swellings, cankers, sore mouths and throats, being washed with the decoction; it cleanses and strengthens the neck and throat, and helps those swellings which when people have, they say the almonds of their ears are fallen down. It is excellently good for the rankness of the gums, a safe and present remedy for the king’s evil. They are excellent for the stone and gravel, especially the nuts being dried. They also resist poison, and bitings of venomous beasts. CAMPION WILD. Descript.The wild White Campion has many long and somewhat broad dark green leaves lying upon the ground, and divers ribs therein, somewhat like plantain, but somewhat hairy, broader, but not so long : The hairy stalks rise up in the mid- dle of them three or four feet high, and sometimes more, with divers great white joints at several places thereon, and two such like leaves thereat Up to the top, send- ing forth branches at several joints also : All which bear on several foot^stalks white flowers at the tops of them, consisting of five broad pointed leaves, every one cut in on the end unto the middle, making them seem to be two a-piece, smelling somewhat sweet, and each of them standins; in a large green striped hairy husk, large and round below next to the stalk : The seed is small and greyish in the hard heads that come up afterwards. The root is white and long, spreading divers fangs in the ground. The red wild Campion grows in tiie same manner as the white, but his leaves are not so plainly ribbed, somewhat shorter, rounder, and more woolly in handling. The flowers are of the same form and bigness; but in some of a pale, in others of a bright red colour, cut in at the ends more finely, which makes the leaves look more in number than the other. The seeds and the roots are alike, the roots of both sorts abiding many years. There are forty-five kinds of Campion more, those of them which are of a phy- sical use, having the like virtues wfith those above described, which I take to be the two chiefest kinds. Place.~\ They groAV commonly through this land by fields and hedge-sides and ditches. Time.~\ They flower in Summer, some earlier than others, and some abiding longer than others. Government and virUies.'] They belong unto Saturn, and it is found by experience, that the decoction of the herb, either in white 01' red wine being drank, doth stay inward bleedings, and applied outwardly, it does the like; and being drank, helps to expel urine being stopped, and gravel and stone in the reins or kidnej^s. Two drams of the seed drank in wine, purges the body of choleric humours, andAielps those that are stung by scorpions, or other venomous beasts, and ^ may be as effectual for the plague. It is of very good use in old sores, ulcers, cankers, fistulas, and the like, to cleanse and heat them, by con- suming the moist humours falling into